DigitalOcean Review

Testing new systems is affordable. Backup/snapshots does not always restore properly.

Valuable Features

Simple no-nonsense, super fast, and reliable Linux based servers on the cloud.

Improvements to My Organization

- Ability to spin up addition production servers in seconds

- Testing new systems and setup is super affordable

- Instantly go global US/UK/Amsterdam

Room for Improvement

- Backup/snapshots does not always restore properly

- Would be nice to build servers direct from ISO's

- Custom Kernels can be tricky

Use of Solution

5 months

Deployment Issues

Nope, deployment are super simple.

Stability Issues

Stability has been Rock Solid.

Scalability Issues

Not for our needs.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

Very responsive. Not always helpful.

Technical Support:

OK not great. Than again, I am a fairly advanced user.

Previous Solutions

We tried many other solutions. AWS, Azure, RackSpace, Low-End-Boxs

Our projects are very price sensitive, global, and customer experience focused. The top guys are just to expensive for our business model. Our service is 7x24x365, heavy on bandwidth, and requires many small servers. We wanted simple flat pricing for dedicated cloud servers and the ability to grow elastically when required. Digital Ocean really hit the sweet spot.

The Low-end guys where just not reliable enough, and honestly not that much cheaper.

Initial Setup

As straightforward as can be. They have really make it super simple to get started.

If you know how to administer a Linux server, you will have no problems at all.

Implementation Team

I tried them out after I read they received some serious funding. They have very attractive incentives for getting started, so I tried them out.

ROI

Immediate. Saved $100's the first month we started to use their service. Too good to be true.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

$5/month per server.

10 servers deployed throughout the globe costs us $50/month -- this comes with:

- 1TB of bandwidth per server

- 1 IP4 internet routable IP per server

- 20 GB SSD storage per server

- 512k ram

- 1 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630L v2 @ 2.40GHz

Other Solutions Considered

See above

Other Advice

If you have the Linux and networking skills, this is truly a wonderful no-frills service. I pride myself on being a good value for money customer. This is a great value for a great service.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.